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The Machine
The Machine is a short film directed by Elliot Strange and released in 1989. It's a critique of Lyndon B. Johnson set to Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine. Structure The film starts with a very brief glimpse of a worn and beaten woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty. It then fades to a series of cogs working against a red fog. A demon appears briefly and the fog turns blue. It goes to a picture of Texas, with Gillespie County in red and fading in before the rest of the picture. We see glimpses of Texas during the confederacy, along with shots of the Stonewall Ranch featuring depictions of Lyndon B. Johnson urinating on the side of a barn and howling with his dog Yuki, along with other images of Johnson in compromising positions. It fades to a stage which is against an inactive monitor. The floor opens and Johnson emerges, running his hands across a board that illuminates before him. The monitor activates and a man appears behind him. More monitors activate and we see Johnson decrying an African American worker, before it cuts to him interacting with Martin Luther King Jr. (to go along with "Where have you been? It's alright we know where you've been.") It goes to Johnson and his election committee attempting to exploit Barry Goldwater's views, reflected through a depiction of Goldwater getting trampled by a stampede of donkeys and elephants (indicative of the Republican and Democratic parties.), and ends with a missile flying and hitting the girl from the Daisy political ad, decapitating her as the camera remains focused on her slowly decaying head. We learn that Johnson is inside of a ship that's modeled after his head. The ship slowly travels through a city, kids are seen cowering beneath a small court hidden between two buildings, while several adults are seen watching through their windows. A red wave rides in from the north, with decaying body parts rising up. Attention is put toward a crowd of African Americans who morph into jagged rocks and converge with the wave. Through Johnson's eyes, we watch as he stoically sees Vietnamese and American soldiers getting killed and killing mothers and children. In a callback to the man on the monitor, we see various items fly by, indicative of a rural man but changing to that of a urbanized one before stopping on a shot of the American flag. The flag oozes a blue substance and falls apart. The stars fall out and six are seen falling and breaking whilst airborne. Johnson appears with blacked out eyes, cutting into a steak shaped like the United States of America ("Always ate at the steak bar.) Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana are missing while Johnson rips out a part of Arizona. A jaguar rips through the steak and morphs into a 1963 Jaguar E-Type (a pun on the line "Loves to drive in his Jaguar."), with Johnson at the wheel and driving past an ongoing riot. As Johnson continues to meander through the town, usurping money and being unresponsive to the violence, a man pushes a button and a missile flies toward the ship. It slows and explodes, destroying the face of the ship. We go inside and see Johnson has shriveled up (and likely dead.) The monitors activate and the people shown in the city laugh uproariously. Allusions * The piece Johnson cuts out of Arizona in the steak scene resembles Coconino, Maricopa, Navajo and Yavapi counties. While Barry Goldwater won his home state, he was only able to carry those counties and owes his victory to Maricopa's high population. * The money scene refers to the otherwise costly Great Society and War on Poverty. * Johnson's contributions to the Civil Rights Movement is used as a cover for escalating tensions in Vietnam and his ineffectiveness in dealing with the war. (The red wave refers to the communistic Northern Vietnam.) * The trampling scene refers to the animosity stirred toward Goldwater over his views. The Democratic Party viewed him as an opponent by default due to separate party affiliations while the Republicans felt alienated by his views. * The Daisy political advert refers to exploiting people's fears and what led to Johnson winning the 1964 election. Production Strange had been relatively critical of Lyndon B. Johnson. While he did commend Johnson for making progress on African American rights, he felt that Johnson's character contradicted his actions. Going by word of mouth, Strange viewed Johnson as a vulgar individual and honed in on his objective cons. Taking influence from Gerald Scarfe and Pink Floyd, and feeling underwhelmed by the music video for the latter's Welcome to the Machine, Strange decided to make a short film using the song as a backdrop. Owing considerably to Scarfe, the film utilizes detailed backgrounds and painted stills. Rotoscoping was also used during the monitor scenes. The man was portrayed by Conrad Teller, a friend and roommate of Strange when the latter rented an apartment in Atlanta. Strange completed the film within five months, isolating himself in his apartment and paying Teller to run errands for him. Strange reportedly suffered a near fatal blood clot due to spending so much time sitting down animating the project. He had also gained a considerable amount of weight having only eaten junk food for the time.